Appliance Discounts, for the Swift

A customer searched for energy-efficient appliances at a Best Buy in Florida. The state began offering government rebates for the appliances last week. Credit
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Whether it is newfound green consciousness ahead of Earth Day — or just the allure of a big discount on a new washing machine or air-conditioner — consumers across the country are snapping up government rebates for energy-efficient appliances.

In Florida, which began offering the rebates Friday, the $17.6 million allocated for the program lasted a day and half, as more than 72,000 claims were filed. In Illinois, the second half of its $12.4 million, made available on Friday, disappeared in 11 hours.

As of late afternoon, 4,748 rebates worth $407,350 had been reserved, or roughly 7 percent of the state’s rebate money, said Judd Slivka, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. “We’re fairly comfortable saying there will be a Day 2,” he said.

Nationwide, $300 million in rebate money has been allocated by the federal government to 56 states and territories to encourage residents to buy furnaces, clothes washers, refrigerators and other appliances with the government’s Energy Star label. Typically, rebates run about $75 for a clothes washer and several hundred dollars for home heating and cooling systems. Colorado, which began its rebate program Monday, is offering $15,000 back for installing a commercial solar thermal system.

But in an experience reminiscent of last year’s popular “cash for clunkers” program, which paid consumers to trade in gas-guzzling automobiles, interest in the appliance programs has been so been intense that the state programs are often running dry in a matter of days.

In some cases, retailers and states have promoted the rebates in advance, allowing shoppers to plot their strategies as carefully as the day after Thanksgiving.

For example, Melissa Woodall, a single mother of three in Miami, said she began scanning appliance ads a few weeks ago for a new stove. She noticed an article about the rebates and decided to replace her old, leaky dishwasher and refrigerator.

The day before qualified purchases were allowed, she visited Sears to pick out the appliances. On Friday, she arrived to the store at 6:30 a.m. and found 49 customers in line. Fortunately, the store had given her a printout the night before. All she had to do was pay and arrange delivery, which still took an hour and a half in the crowded store.

And the ordeal was not over, Ms. Woodall said — she still had to get the rebate itself. At 11 a.m., when online signups began, she and her sister went to the state’s rebate site. “The Web site was flooded. It kept crashing,” she said. It took her an hour and 15 minutes to get registered for the rebate.

It was worth it, Ms. Woodall said. She paid about $1,500 for the dishwasher and fridge and will be getting about $500 back.

Each state has structured its own program, sometimes excluding certain appliances like air-conditioners or requiring proof that old appliances were recycled before paying out the cash. The amount of money available varies widely, from more than $35 million in California, where the program is scheduled to start on Thursday in connection with Earth Day, to $100,000 in American Samoa.

For advocates of energy efficiency and those seeking a lift for a still-ailing economy, the strong response has been a welcome sign — though not everyone has been pleased.

Photo

A customer searched for energy-efficient appliances at a Best Buy in Florida. The state began offering government rebates for the appliances last week. Credit
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

In Texas, where reservations for a mail-in rebate program were accepted by phone or online this month, the dedicated Web site failed almost immediately, according to state regulators, and the phone lines were overloaded.

By 2 p.m. on April 7, just seven hours after the Texas program opened for business, all rebate reservations were taken. Places on a subsequent waiting list were filled by 6 p.m.

The state blamed a contractor for its problems. Susan Combs, the Texas comptroller of public accounts, complained: “It is not acceptable that thousands of Texans spent hours trying to reserve appliance rebates on Wednesday, April 7, only to be met with dropped calls and an unavailable online reservation system.”

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

After studying the experience of Texas and other states, Missouri decided to try a phased rebate system. Through Tuesday, consumers can apply for rebates only through a retailer or appliance installer. Starting Wednesday, they can seek the money directly through the state.

“This is a way of controlling points of access into the system, so we don’t oversubscribe and people end up really frustrated," said Mr. Slivka, the spokesman for the agency running the program.

Illinois took another approach, pushing all of the paperwork hassles onto retailers, which were required to give instant rebates to the customer and recover the funds from the state. “It was easier on the customer,” said Michael Abt, president of Abt Electronics in the Chicago area.

Mr. Abt said the state paid his company promptly after the first phase of rebates in January, which applied to home and hot water heaters, and he expected to get paid within a month for Friday’s phase, which covered other appliances.

The federal government created the appliance rebate program as part of the 2009 stimulus legislation, and retailers say it has increased sales.

Anticipating that the Colorado rebates would go quickly once they became available Monday, Appliance Factory Outlet, which has stores across the state, began advertising the program a month ago and allowed customers to reserve appliances in advance. The dealer estimates that it will make over $300,000 in sales from the program, according to the marketing director, Cleat Crocker.

As of late afternoon, the Colorado governor’s office said that 8,600 rebates had been reserved, with a total of about 75,000 expected to be provided through the program.

The high interest is understandable. The rebate programs come on top of existing discounts on Energy Star appliances, recycling and take-back rebates for old units, and specials provided by individual retailers. In some cases, consumers may qualify for federal or state tax credits, too.

Kateri Callahan, the president of the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit coalition that promotes efficiency measures, praised the rebates as stimulating the economy while providing “an immediate, point-of-purchase incentive for consumers by ‘buying down’ the price of new, energy-efficient appliances.”

BrandsMart USA, an electronics and appliance superstore with nine locations in Florida and Georgia, said customer interest was so strong Friday and Saturday, when Florida’s rebates were available, that the chain decided to offer its own discounts after the state money ran out.

“We are still getting a lot of business from it,” said Bobby Johnson, a senior vice president at the company.

Malcolm Gay and Dan Frosch contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on April 20, 2010, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Appliance Discounts, For the Swift. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe